World Book Day 2023
This year, World Book Day took place on Thursday 2 March 2023 and the emphasis was on making it YOUR World Book Day. Since it was first celebrated in the UK and Ireland over 25 years ago, the day has grown to become an essential calendar fixture for schools, settings and communities. It provides a fantastic opportunity to focus on reading for pleasure, supporting children’s autonomy in book choice, and creating a habit of reading that brings a wide range of benefits.
At Footsteps our love of reading is never just celebrated on one day, but our amazing team produced a whole weeks’ worth of activities to support the celebrations on the Thursday.
At Oving we enjoyed 3 Little Pigs and Magic Porridge Pot messy play, a Gruffalo hunt in the garden finding fox, snake, owl and of course The Gruffalo! Inspired by Octopants we have been making our very own designer underpants for Mr Octopus. We had a roarsome time with Harry and his bucketful of dinosaurs – decorated and traced our own dinosaurs and even made our own buckets for them.
Babies looked at the book Bright Stanley. We made fish out of our handprints and learnt to blow bubbles. We made Very Hungry Caterpillars out of playdough and fed him food. We then made and decorated some giant butterflies. Carrying on with our food themed favourites we also enjoyed activities around “Supertato” and even made our own hero potato to take home.
At Watermead we enjoyed exploring Goldilocks and the 3 bears. We created a wonderful tuff tray so we could ask “Who’s been eating my porridge?” One of our favourite stories is The Gruffalo so we did lots of themed activities throughout the week – making masks, log pile houses, cutting out snakes and retelling the story using props at the end – and what great memories our children have! We had some of our families coming in to share their favourite books too which was very special.
Maple Cross welcomed the team from Tiny Mites Music team who helped to bring some stories to life with lots of singing and dancing – it was brilliant fun!
Leighton Buzzard played a fantastic game of “That’s not my..” which included lots of giggles! Supertato was the basis for a great activity saving fruit and veg from the evil Pea – practising cutting skills as they released them from their sellotape restraints. They then organised their own superhero assault course – they all were Super and saved the day! They also took inspiration from “Supertato” and head on a trip to the Market to see what new fruit and vegetables they could try.
Farnborough had a big smile like a crocodile as they looked at the letter C and focused on the book Alan’s Big Scary Teeth. It was a great opportunity for the children to think about looking after their own teeth and to practice their brushing skills! They also read lots of Pirate stories, enjoyed some role play dressing up and imagining cannons shooting across the sea – ahoy there me hearties!
Chalfont St Peter got arty as they decorated Elmer The Patchwork Elephant in lots of bright colours, made their own golden tickets and Willy Wonka Chocolate bars. Food was certainly a strong activity favourite across our sites – in particular creating our own magic porridge pot, Hungry Caterpillar fruit kebabs and scrambled snake eggs!
On the 2nd March Children were invited to dress up as their favourite book character – and as ever our families were incredible with their support. We had some fantastic costumes including The Lion King, Stick Man, Hungry Caterpillar, princesses, superhero’s, pirates, Thomas The Tank Engine, Elmer The Elephant, Peter Rabbit, Ladybirds, Dalmatians, tigers, marmalade loving bears, frogs and even a giraffe in a bath to name just a few! Not to mention our fun-loving teams who transformed into characters such as Mr Bump, Where’s Wally, Red Riding Hood and even a Cat in a Hat.
A huge thanks to everyone involved for making books so much fun!
